1. Priority Claim
This application claims the benefit of priority from European Patent Application No. 09 425 146.9, filed Apr. 20, 2009, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.
2. Technical Field
This application relates generally to IMS (Internet protocol multimedia subsystem) technologies and in particular to an IMS application server, an IMS network, a computer-implemented method, and a computer program product for executing services accessible over a plurality of different access channels.
3. Related Art
There is a need for telecommunication companies and/or for enterprise companies to continuously improve and innovate their customer care services. At the same time, there is a need to reduce costs and to be more efficient in their operations and services provided.
In today's legacy networks used by such companies to handle and/or manage such services, each access channel (e.g., TDM, IPTV, and Web) needs its own application to manage a user contact. These legacy networks with a separate application for each access channel might also be referred to as vertical technological silos. Therefore, in this scenario, the service logic is replicated on each access channel and, in addition, the service creation may be complicated because the service creation environment may be scattered on multiple systems and/or network nodes.
Hence, there is a need to support the customer care (“caring”) process and services and to enhance and enrich customer contact experience both on present and future communication access channels in order to address technical limitations that exist in many networks today.